Desert of the Heart: A Novel by Jane Rule Read Free Book Online Page B

there was a breeze, and just the sound of the water made it seem cooler. It was certainly not an impressive river. Evelyn could hardly imagine this stream, which seemed to struggle over the rocks of its own bed, in flood strength. The high concrete walls, which served as its banks, left a natural margin of shore where half a dozen old men loitered. Were they fishing? Two of them had poles, but the others were empty-handed. One looked up at Evelyn and shouted something she could not understand. Another laughed. Evelyn turned away quickly and crossed the bridge.
    She found it impossible to stroll down the street. There were already too many people like herself, obviously killing time. They drifted and then were caught by a window display, a newspaper stand, or a private uncertainty, but none of these could hold their attention long. Walking or standing still, they watched each other with speculative, ironic eyes. Evelyn herself became uncertain, then self-conscious. She had somehow lost control of the day. She hurried along, as if she had somewhere to go, until she found herself in the crowds on the main street. Above their heads, each angling for its own space, were the huge signs of the casinos, baroque with unlighted bulbs; and everywhere, in waves above the noise of the crowds and traffic, came the downbeat of the machines. Whatever Evelyn had expected when she imagined this Monte Carlo of Nevada, it was not this false-fronted block of giant penny arcades, these rows of factories where shiftless consumers volunteered to operate money-eating machines for the Establishment. Here was no seductive, neon night where men of the world won and lost fortunes before women who drank scarlet cocktails to their victory or defeat. The men she saw could have been high school principals or druggists or house painters. One woman might have been her cleaning woman, another her mother. There they all were, these ordinary people, losing their groceries, their children’s shoes, a week’s rent, at nine thirty on this hot July morning. And they all looked as bored and at home as they would have been over the breakfast dishes or the morning’s business mail.
    Evelyn walked on past one casino after another until she came to Frank’s Club. It was no different from the others, neither more glamorous nor more frightening. Evelyn could have walked right in, right through the Club, no more conspicuous than she would have been in a market or department store. If she felt dislocated, no one would ever know. Tempted only because she knew Ann Childs worked here, Evelyn did not go in. It would have seemed to her as intrusively curious as her investigating of Ann’s room while she was out. And now, no longer able to imagine what a gambling casino might be like, Evelyn found the fact of Ann’s working at Frank’s Club a dragging weight on her already uncertain mood. She turned away to look for a place where she could get a cup of coffee, but she had to get off the main street before she found one.
    Before eleven o’clock Evelyn had had several cups of coffee and had bought a cotton skirt and a bathing suit. She had not really enough money to buy anything, but she did not know how else to kill time. She had not been able to find a bookstore, and everywhere else, on the street and in shops and cafés, though she was inconspicuous, she felt vulnerable. Busy as she tried to keep herself, she arrived at the lawyer’s office fifteen minutes early.
    The secretary was middle-aged and solicitous. She offered to take Evelyn’s parcels, moved an ash tray already within her reach, and, after Evelyn had begun to read a magazine forced on her, the secretary continued to chatter like a bird in a cage. Evelyn looked up, making her face a mask of polite interest, while she let an inner voice answer, “If you don’t keep still, I’ll strangle you and put you in a pie.”
    “Here’s Mr. Williams now,” the secretary cried enthusiastically, as a small, gray-haired